THREE childhood friends reunite after the death of a close friend to finish a mission he started - locating $200,000 that vanished with plane hijacker D B Cooper in the 70s.

Their adventures see them almost drowning in water rapids, coming close to starvation, escaping a grizzly bear with acute maternal feelings towards one of them and trying to stay out of the clutches of two hillbillies with a passion for extreme violence.

This is an extremely bad "buddy" movie which throws in a few really weak jokes to lighten the tone.

Just when I believed the soppy "we are all very different but love each other none the same" elements were out of the way, we are hit with the most nauseating ending to any film I've seen in recent years.

But the most irritating thing about Without a Paddle is, without doubt, the attempts at humour. Most of it would probably be considered pathetic even by a 12-year-old school boy with a particularly immature sense of what is funny.

Seth Green, Matthew Lillard and Dax Shepherd are not appalling in the roles of the friends but how they prevented themselves from cringing upon reading this dire script beggars belief.

HC